dancingprodigies

[dancingprodigies]

Simple- Jake Tribus and Sarah Pippin

Choreography by Travis Wall

[dancingprodigies]

[dancingprodigies]

And even if they try to, they don’t do it like I do

[dancingprodigies]

Lex gave the most mature response to a question about being one of the few to have won TDA more than once: “Hmm for me it’s just a title and I think I was lucky enough to be there at the right place/right time. Lots of people deserve the title. But I like meeting/dancing with friends and vibin.” …… I wish more people in this uber competitive comp world has his perspective

[dancingprodigies]

[dancingprodigies]

im hardcore rooting for jordan man, she is inspires me so much and i’m so glad we got to know her and her story. i know this might be “viewer manipulation” but this girl doesn’t even have a BED to sleep in at night and can’t afford all the classes she may want to take but she wakes up everyday with the determination to excel despite not being as fortunate as her classmates and if that isn’t willpower i dont know what is

[dancingprodigies]

Dancing_kenzie: So… My anxiety has been really bad for awhile. I have only been able to take 2 ballet classes in 3 weeks. Today I felt better and had a little therapy! Dancing out my anxiety! 😘

[dancingprodigies]

Sophia Lucia on Varna’s livestream

[dancingprodigies]

[dancingprodigies]

[dancingprodigies]

[dancingprodigies]

People often take for granted the role that wealth and classism play in competitive dance. In a world where attending TDA costs more than I paid for a semester of uni, where now dancers attend nearly a dozen competitions per year and seem to do a different solo at each, where flying to California to say you competed on the west coast (even if you aren’t west coast-based) is seen as a huge achievement, people who maybe aren’t old enough to really understand finance need to know that most elite competitive dancers are from total 1% families.

And that’s not to say that this makes them bad people, but it’s more to give some perspective: this is not an accessible world. This is not a world that is in line with how the vast majority people in the world live. And when you’re a dancer, particularly a young dancer, who trains 20+ hours a week and spends darn near every weekend from March on competing, traveling and staying in hotels with people who are, for the most part, just like you, you tend to get a skewed sense of the world. You tend to know very little outside of your own circumstances. (Not to mention the amount of kids who are homeschooled for dance.

I was a “poor” dancer - my family struggled financially, but we had the good fortune of my brother and sister never doing any extracurricular, never travelling, etc. that dance was somewhat attainable for me. Nevertheless I worked at my studio to get a discount in my tuition, I used secondhand costumes, my parents didn’t accompany me on a single trip. We didn’t even hold a candle to the kind of demands studios, companies and competitive teams have nowadays, but it still felt difficult being around kids who were so much better off than me.

Not because it made them bad people, but because for the most part they just didn’t understand.

When one girl told me she was sick of people calling her spoiled because she “worked really hard for everything she had” I was caught somewhere between wanting to guffaw and wanting to cry. This girl had only ever had one job - teaching at the studio. She didn’t have to apply. She didn’t even want to do the drudge work that I was doing - reception, cleaning, sorting costumes, selling dance wear, sending invoices. I even cleaned up pee when a few of the little ones had accidents. She hadn’t ever known what it was like to spend all summer working at a fast food joint coming home with fries stuck to her shoe, smelling like shortening, taking orders, being treated like crap by people. She didn’t know what it was like to work 5 am-8 am before school because that was the only way you could accommodate your schedule. And yet she had her own car the second she got her G2 - was I to believe she had paid for that all by herself?

So when I see people telling stories about being at competitions and being upset because they’ve been spurned or alienated by other teams, I’m sad but I’m not surprised. Competitive dance is kind of like an isolated community where you know so little about the outside. You don’t think you’re wrong, but you still have no idea how - or no desire - to relate with anyone else.

This isn’t me saying that your faves aren’t the amazing “cinnamon rolls” you see them as; children are innocent and don’t have these biases or tendencies on purpose. But I think it’s safe to say that few realize how charmed a life they live, or how different their world is from the “real” world. My hope is that dancers are able to grow up with enough self-awareness to not let that affect the person they become when they are older.

[dancingprodigies]

[dancingprodigies]

Love how much fun the older dancers are having. They are letting loose and just having fun. It’s not a competition to them it’s a performance where they get to show the world why they dance.

[dancingprodigies]

My Favorite Improvs! [TDALV ‘16]

Gotta go for today, but here are my favorite improvs from tonight! Have fun watching the rest of the solos! (Hopefully someone will record?) (Exclamation marks = <3 <3 <3)

Mini Female Brightyn Brems Samantha Eve Hailey Meyers

Junior Female Alexandra Andrada Ella Horan Jade Bucci!!! Emma York!!!

Junior Male Ryan Williams!!! Alexander Shulman!!!

Teen Female Emma Sutherland Kalani Hilliker!!! Olivia Alboher Shelby Patterson

Teen Male Jaxon Willard Carter Williams!!! Sage Rosen!!! Christian Smith Ferris Schley

Senior Female Taylor Sieve Mykayla Hicks!!! Simrin Player

Senior Male Jay Jay Dixonbey!!! Lex Ishimoto!!! Michael [?] Nico Lonetree

[dancingprodigies]

Hailey's movement is gorgeous!

[dancingprodigies]

Haha :P It's nice to see you again too!

I have a lot going on but I'm definitely going to try to be somewhat active on here over the summer!

Omg this group improv is even crazier than the individual